Google’s Street View map imagery program, which uses camera-equipped cars to snap photos of locations, was faulted two years ago for collecting data from peoples’ web traffic over WiFi without their knowledge in the U.S. and in Europe. The company promised European regulators it would delete the data, but as it turned out, Google still hasn’t deleted all of it.
The UK Inormation Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on Friday published a letter it received from Google in which the company admits it “still has in its possession a small portion of payload data collected by our Street View vehicles in the UK… and other countries. We are in the process of notifying the relevant authorities in those countries.”
The ICO noted that “the fact that some of this information still exists appears to breach the undertaking to the ICO signed by Google in November 2010,” but said that it asked Google for copies of the data for review before deletion. The Associated Press reported that other countries whose data Google still retains include: “France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria and Australia.”
